What is your Virtual Function?

XenServer

I use a Vyatta virtual router in my home lab to segregate my test networks from the home one. I first used the virtual appliance over a year ago and its be faultless ever since. I can’t claim to use more that 1% of its functionality as a) networking is not my thing and b) it does what I need and I’ve left my investigation at that. So if you want to spin one up on XenServer 6.0 here is what you need to do.

Download the latest iso from Vyatta. You have to enter your details to do this and if you are not paying a subscription then some features, such as the web GUI will not be available to you. As a tes lab router however you’ll be able to do everything you need.

Create a new VM on XenServer 6.0, select Other, and assign a disk (at least 1GB – I use 20GB) and 512MB of RAM (I use 1GB). In regards to network interfaces you will need to work out in advance where you want your device to site in your network. I have created two networks on my XenServer host, Network 0 and Testlab and both are bound to the single NIC I use. My new VM therefore has two network interfaces one on Network 0 and one on Testlab.

Make sure the iso you have down loaded is in the new VM DVD drive and start up the machine.

The iso is known as the live iso and will not install by default. Login in using the default credentials (username= vyatta , password = vyatta) and run the following commands:

install-system
Select all defaults until you get to the following section, where you change the option to yes “Would you like to set up config files to prepare for the conversion to PV domU? [No]: ” yes

Following the install I run the commit and save commands then shutdown .

At reboot you will now want to install the Xen tools. To do this make sure the xen tools iso is in the VM DVD Drive, login in and and execute the following commands:

Configure

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

ls /mnt/Linux

sudo dpkg -i /mnt/Linux/xe-guest-utilities_6.0.0-743_i386.deb

sudo umount /dev/cdrm /mnt

commit

save

shutdown

Restart the VM and login to the console. you can now add IP addresses to the interfaces and a static route so your test lab machines can access you home router and out to the Internet. I have also set a static route on my home router so it can get back to the testlab VLAN. I have listed examples of commands that you may find useful below:

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